Cable Cars downtown Berlin (single_moments#003030817)

I do miss the alps as it’s now already several years I moved away from France/Switzerland. For obvious reasons means of transportation like cable cars are not to be found in Berlin. Wrong. There is one allowing you to gently float over the IGA 2017 (Internationale Gartenausstellung). An upcoming storm looked promising, so I gave it a shot and went to Marzahn / Hellersdorf.

Follow the white arrow.

While most tourist guides would not even mention this borough of Berlin, I somehow do like the 70ies style architecture (There are some similarities to the Grands Ensembles in Paris. I said some …). Working lightweight meant using the FUJIFILM X-Pro2 with the XF 14/1.4. No tripod, Guerilla style – quick and constantly moving. Maximum sharpness is not the point here. It’s about light and how it is captured. Knowing that ISO values can be easily pushed up to 6400 – No problem. Even at night (after 22:00 in this case) the light pollution never gives a really dark environment (Teaser: There’s a project coming, where really dark skies are needed. This means driving out of town some 40 to 60km).

Gold and Velvia Blue.

The air was hot, a nice wind not making it feel like and the cloud formations moving fast. Perfect light for atmospheric cityscapes. I decided to pronounce the colors a little further and chose VELVIA as film simulation. In camera contrast adaptation: Shadows -2, Highlight +1.

Double tracks.

The white balance was kept to automatic here leading to a nice natural color reproduction. Did I mention the light was spectacular ?

Purple sky with UFO landing site. For the visitors there’s a nice sky-walk up on that hill.

Looking trough the viewfinder, first I did not like the fact that due to the 14mm focal length (21mm equivalent for a 35mm camera) the point of interest in this shot appeared rather small. I decided to give it a try and have to say I quite like the result. It adds to the mysterious mood of the scene. It could be a rain forest somewhere far away – No this ‘landscape’ is found in Berlin.

There is a time difference of around 40 minutes between these two shots. Same camera settings !

The shutter speed down to 1/7 and 1/3 of a second was a little challenging, but thanks to the perfect weight balance of the camera-lens combination, I managed to get enough sharpness into those frames. Hard to say which one I prefer.

A Ghost at the end of the bridge.

Even at f=2.8 and ISO maxed out (6400) it was border-line dark on the way back to the starting point. Placing the focus just approximately 1 m in front of me adds to the dream-like mood in this shot.

Skate Park after sunset.

While the foreground appeared pretty dark on location the reflected light of this bright street light on the right filled nicely in and makes the Graffiti on this ramp an interesting part of the overall composition.

All images are .jpg sooc (straight out of camera) – One thing I love about shooting with FUJIFILM X-series cameras. The X-Trans sensor renders color like no other digital camera I know. You decide beforehand which look you like for the scene, via Q-menu all settings are fine tuned within seconds – ready to shoot.